Òîïèê: China's population

Òîïèê: China's population

Context:

President on Population Control, Resources and Environmental Protection

p.17

LITERATURE

P.19

BASIC INFORMATION

China is a multinational country, with
a population com­posed of a large number of ethnic and linguistic groups.
Almost all its inhabitants are of Mongoloid stock: thus, the basic classification
of the population is not so much Han ethnic as linguistic. The Han (Chinese),
the largest group, (Chinese) outnumber the minority groups or minority
nationalities in every province or autonomous region except Tibet and Sinkiang.
The Han. therefore, form the great homoge­neous mass of the Chinese people,
sharing the same cul­ture, the same traditions, and the same written language.
Some 55 minority groups are spread over approximately 60 percent of the total
area of the country. Where these minority groups are found in large numbers,
they have been given some semblance of autonomy and self-govern­ment;
autonomous regions of several types have been established on the basis of the
geographical distribution of nationalities.

The government takes great credit for
its treatment of these minorities, including care for their economic
well-being, the raising of their living standards, the provision of educational
facilities, the promotion of their national languages and cultures, and the
raising of their levels of lit­eracy, as well as for the introduction of a
written language where none existed previously. In this connection it may be
noted that, of the 50-odd minority languages, only 20 had written forms before
the coming of the Communists; and only relatively few written languages, for example,
Mongolian. Tibetan. Uighur, Kazakh, Tai, and Korean, were in everyday use.
Other written languages were used chiefly for religious purposes and by a
limited number of persons. Educational institutions for national minorities are
a feature of many large cities, notably Peking, Wu­han, Ch'eng-tu. and
Lan-chou.

Four major language families are
represented in China: the Sino-Tibetan. Altaic. Indo-European, and
Austro-Asiatic. The Sino-Tibetan family, both numerically and in the extent of
its distribution, is the most important; within this family, Han Chinese is the
most widely spoken language. Although unified by their tradition, the written
characters of their language, and many cultural traits, the Han speak several
mutually unintelligible dialects and display marked regional differences. By
far the most im­portant Chinese tongue is the Mandarin, or p'u-l'ung hua, meaning
"ordinary language" or "common language". There are three
variants of Mandarin. The first of these is the northern variant, of which the
Peking dialect, or Peking hua, is typical and which is spoken to the
north of the Tsinling Mountains-Huai River line: as the most widespread Chinese
tongue, it has officially been adopted as the basis for a national language.
The second is the western variant, also known as the Ch'eng-tu or Upper Yangtze
variant; this is spoken in the Szechwan Basin and in adjoining parts of
south-west China. The third is the southern variant, also known as the Nanking
or Lower Yangtze variant, which is spoken in northern Kiangsu and in southern
and central Anhwei Related to Mandarin are the Hunan, or Hsiang, dialect,
spoken by people in central and southern Hunan, and the Kan dialect. The
Hui-chou dialect, spoken in southern Anhwei, forms an enclave within the southern
Mandarin area.

Less intelligible to Mandarin speakers
are the dialects of the south-east coastal region, stretching from Shanghai to
Canton. The. most important of these is the Wu dialect, spoken in southern
Kiangsu and in Chekiang. This is followed, to the south, by the Fu-chou, or
Min. dialect of northern and central Fukien and by the Amoy-Swatow di­alect of
southern Fukien and easternmost Kwangtung. The Hakka dialect of southernmost
Kiangsi and north-eastern Kwangtung has a rather scattered pattern of
distribution. Probably the best known of these southern dialects is Can­tonese,
which is spoken in central and western Kwangtung and in southern Kwangsi a
dialect area in which a large proportion of overseas Chinese originated.

In addition to the Han, the Manchu and
the Hui (Chinese Muslims) also speak Mandarin and use Chinese characters.
Manchu The Hui are descendants of Chinese who adopted Islam and Hui when it
penetrated into China in the 7th century. They are intermingled with the Han
throughout much of the country and are distinguished as Hui only in the area of
their heaviest concentration, the Hui Autonomous Region of Ningsia. Other Hui
communities are organised as au­tonomous prefectures (tzu-chih-cfiou) in
Sinkiang and as autonomous counties (tzu-chih-hsien) in Tsinghai. Hopeh.
Kweichow, and Yunnan. There has been a growing ten­dency for the Hui to move
from their scattered settlements into the area of major concentration,
possibly, as firm ad­herents of Islam, in order to facilitate intermarriage
with other Muslims.

The Manchu declare themselves to be
descendants of the Manchu warriors who invaded China in the 17th century and
founded the Ch'ing dynasty (1644-1911/12). Ancient Manchu is virtually a dead
language, and the Manchu have been completely assimilated into Han Chinese cul­ture.
They are found mainly in North China and the Northeast, but they form no
separate autonomous areas above the commune level. Some say the Koreans of the
Northeast, who form an autonomous prefecture in eastern Kirin, cannot be
assigned with certainty to any of the standard language classifications.

The Chuang-chia, or Chuang, are China's
largest minority group. Most of them live in the Chuang Autonomous Region of
Kwangsi. They are also represented in national autonomous areas in neighbouring
Yunnan and Kwang­tung. They depend mainly on the cultivation of rice for their
livelihood In religion they are animists, worship­ing particularly the spirits
of their ancestors, The Puyi (Chung-chia) group are concentrated in southern
Kwei­chow, where they share an autonomous prefecture with the Miao group. The
T'ung group are settled in small communities in Kwangsi and Kweichow; they
share with the Miao group an autonomous prefecture set up in south-east
Kweichow in 1956. The Tai group are concentrated in southern Yunnan and were
established in two autono­mous prefectures—one whose population is related most
closely to the Tai of northern Thailand and another whose Tai are related to
the Shan people of Burma. The Li of Hai-nan Island form a separate group of the
Chinese-Tai language branch. They share with the Miao people a district in southern
Hai-nan.

Tibetans are distributed over the entire
Tsinghai-Tibetan plateau. Outside Tibet,
Tibetan minorities constitute au­tonomous prefectures and autonomous counties.
There are five Tibetan autonomous prefectures in Tsinghai, two in Szechwan, and
one each in Yunnan and Kansu. The Tibetans still keep their tribal
characteristics, but few of them are nomadic. Though essentially farmers, they
also raise livestock and, as with other tribal peoples in the Chi­nese far
west, also hunt to supplement their food supply. The major religion of Tibet
has been Tibetan Buddhism since about the 17th century; before 1959 the social
and political institutions of this region were still based largely on this
faith. Many of the Yi (Lolo) were concentrated in two autonomous
prefectures—one in southern Szechwan and another in northern Yunnan. They raise
crops and sometimes keep flocks and herds.

The Miao-Yao branch, with their major
concentration in Kweichow, are distributed throughout the central south and
south-western provinces and are found also in some small areas in east China.
They are subdivided into many rather distinct groupings. Most of them have now
lost their traditional tribal traits through the influence of the Han, and it
is only their language that serves to distin­guish them as tribal peoples.
Two-thirds of the Miao are settled in Kweichow, where they share two autonomous
prefectures with the T'ung and Puyi groups. The Yao peo­ple are concentrated in
the Kwangsi-Kwangtung-Hunan border area.

In some areas of China, especially in
the south-west, there are many different ethnic groups that are geographically
intermixed. Because of language barriers and different economic structures,
these peoples all maintain their own cultural traits and live in relative
isolation from one an­other. In some places the Han are active in the towns and
in the fertile river valleys, while the minority peoples depend for their
livelihood on more primitive forms of agriculture or on grazing their livestock
on hillsides and mountains. The vertical distribution of these peoples is in
zones usually the higher they live, the less complex

their way of life. In former times they
did not mix well with one another, but now, with highways penetrating deep into
their settlements, they have better opportunities to communicate with other
groups and are also enjoying better living conditions.

While the minorities of the
Sino-Tibetan language fam­ily are thus concentrated in the south and
south-west, the second major language family the Altaic is represented entirely
by minorities in north-western and northern China. The Altaic family falls into
three branches: Turkic, Mon­golian, and Manchu-Tungus. The Turkic language
branch is by far the most numerous of the three Altaic branches. The Uighur,
who are Muslims, form the largest Turkic minority. They are distributed over
chains of oases in the Tarim Basin and in the Dzungarian Basin of Sinkiang.
They mainly depend on irrigation agriculture for a liveli­hood. Other Turkic
minorities in Sinkiang are splinter groups of nationalities living in
neighbouring nations of Central Asia, including the Kazakh and Kyrgyz. All
these groups are adherents of Islam. The Kazakh and Kyrgyz are pastoral nomadic
peoples, still showing traces of tribal organisation. The Kazakh live mainly in
north-western and north-eastern Sinkiang as herders, retiring to their camps in
the valleys when winter comes; they are established in the 1-li-ha-sa-k'o (Hi Kazakh)
Autonomous Prefecture. The Kyrgyz are high-mountain pastoralists and are con­centrated
mainly in the westernmost part of Sinkiang.

The Mongolians, who are by nature a nomadic people are the
most widely dispersed of the minority nationalities of China. Most of them are
inhabitants of the Inner Mon­golia Autonomous Region. Small Mongolian and Mongo­lian-related
groups of people are scattered throughout the vast area from Sinkiang through
Tsinghai and Kansu and into the provinces of the Northeast (Kirin,
Heilungkiang, and Liaoning). In addition to the Inner Mongolia Au­tonomous
Region, the Mongolians are established in two autonomous prefectures in
Sinkiang, a joint autonomous prefecture with Tibetans and Kazakh in Tsinghai,
and several autonomous counties in the
western area of the Northeast. Some of them retain their tribal divisions and
are pastoralists, but large numbers of Mongolians engage in sedentary
agriculture, and some of them combine the growing of crops with herding. The
tribes, who are de­pendent upon animal husbandry, travel each year around the
pastureland—grazing sheep, goats, horses, cattle, and camels—and then return to
their point of departure. A few take up hunting and fur trapping in order to
supple­ment their income. The Mongolian language consists of several dialects,
but in religion it is a unifying force; most Mongolians are believers in
Tibetan Buddhism. A few linguistic minorities in China belong to neither the
Sino-Tibetan nor the Altaic language family. The Tajik of westernmost Sinkiang
are related to the population of Tajikistan and belong to the Iranian branch of
the Indo-European family. The Kawa people of the China-Burma border area belong
to the Mon-Khmer branch of the Austro-Asiatic family.

POPULATION GROWTH

Historical records show that, as long
ago as 800 âñ, in the early years of the Chou dynasty, China was already
inhabited by about 13,700,000 people. Until the last years The census of the
Hsi (Western) Han dynasty, about ad 2,
comparatively accurate and complete registers of population were kept, and the
total population in that year was given as 59,600,000. This first Chinese
census was intended mainly as a preparatory step toward the levy of a poll tax.
Many members of the population, aware that a census might work to their
disadvantage, managed to avoid reporting; this explains why all subsequent
population figures were unreliable until 1712. In that year the Emperor
declared that an increased population would not be subject to tax; population
figures thereafter gradually became more accurate.

During the later years of the Pei
(Northern) Sung dy­nasty, in the early 12th century, when China was already in
the heyday of its economic and cultural development, the total population began
to exceed 100,000,000. Later, uninterrupted and large-scale invasions from the
north reduced the country's population. When national unifica­tion returned
with the advent of the Ming dynasty, the census was at first strictly
conducted. The population of China, according to a registration compiled in
1381, was quite close to the one registered in ad
2.

From the 15th century onward, the
population increased steadily; this increase was interrupted by wars and natu­ral
disasters in the mid-17th century and slowed by the internal strife and foreign
invasions in the century that preceded the Communist takeover in 1949. During
the 18th century China enjoyed a lengthy period of peace and prosperity, characterized
by continual territorial ex­pansion and an accelerating population increase. In
1762 China had a population of more than 200,000.000. and by 1834 the
population had doubled. It should be noted that during this period there was no
concomitant increase in the amount of cultivable land; from this time on. land
hunger became a growing problem. After 1949 sanitation and medical care greatly
improved, epidemics were brought under control, and the younger generation
became much healthier. Public hygiene also improved, resulting in a death rate
that declined faster than the birth rate and a rate of population growth that
speeded up again. Population reached 1,000.000.000 in the early 1980s.

Now China has
a population of 1,295.33 million. Compared with the population of 1,133.68
million from the 1990 population census (with zero hour of July 1, 1990 as the
reference time), the total population of the 31 provinces, autonomous regions
and municipalities and the servicemen of the mainland of China increased by
132.15 million persons, or 11.66 percent over the past 10 years and 4 months.
The average annual growth was 12.79 million persons, or a growth rate of 1.07
percent.

The continually growing population
poses major prob­lems for the government. Faced with difficulties in ob­taining
an adequate food supply and in combating the generally low standard of living,
the authorities sponsored Drive a drive for birth control in 1955-58. A second
attempt at for birth population control began in 1962, when advocacy of late
control marriages and the use of contraceptives became promi­nent
parts of the program. The outbreak of the Cultural Revolution interrupted this
second family-planning drive, but in 1970 a third and much stricter program was
initi­ated. This program attempted to make late marriage and family limitation
obligatory, and it culminated in 1979 in efforts to implement a policy of one
child per family.

Other developments affected the rate of
population growth more than the first two official family-planning campaigns.
For example, although family planning had been rejected by Chinese Communist
Party Chairman Mao Zedong (Mao Tse-tung) in 1958, the Great Leap Forward that
he initiated in that year (see below The economy) caused a massive
famine that resulted in more deaths than births and a reduction of population
in 1960. By 1963 recovery from the famine produced the highest rate of
population increase since 1949, at more than 3 percent, although the second
birth-control campaign had already begun.

Since the initiation of the third
family-planning program in 1970, however, state efforts have been much more ef­fective.
China's population growth rate is now unusually low for a developing country,
although the huge size of its population still results in a large annual net
popula­tion growth.

Below I described the distribution
of China’s population by different characteristics.

I. Sex
Composition.

Of the people enumerated
in the 31 provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities and servicemen of
the mainland of China, 653.55 million persons or 51.63 percent were males,
while 612.28 million persons or 48.37 percent were females. The sex ratio
(female=100) was 106.74.

II. Age Composition.

Of the people enumerated
in the 31 provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities and servicemen of
the mainland of China, 289.79 million persons were in the age group of 0-14,
accounting for 22.89 percent of the total population; 887.93 million persons in
the age group of 15-64, accounting for 70.15 percent and 88.11 million persons
in the age group of 65 and over, accounting for 6.96 percent. As compared with
the results of the 1990 population census, the share of people in the age group
of 0-14 was down by 4.80 percentage points, and that for people aged 65 and
over was up by 1.39 percentage points.

III. Composition of
Nationalities.

Of the people enumerated
in the 31 provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities and servicemen of
the mainland of China, 1,159.40 million persons or 91.59 percent were of Han
nationality, and 106.43 million persons or 8.41 percent were of various
national minorities. Compared with the 1990 population census, the population
of Han people increased by 116.92 million persons, or 11.22 percent; while the
population of various national minorities increased by 15.23 million persons,
or 16.70 percent.

IV. Composition of
Educational Attainment.

Of the 31 provinces,
autonomous regions and municipalities and servicemen of the mainland of China,
45.71 million persons had finished university education (referring to junior
college and above); 141.09 million persons had received senior secondary
education (including secondary technical school education); 429.89 million
persons had received junior secondary education and 451.91 million persons had
had primary education (the educated persons included graduates and students in
schools).

Compared with the 1990
population census, the following changes had taken place in the number of
people with various educational attainments of every 100,000 people: number of
people with university education increased to 3,611 from 1,422; number of
people with senior secondary education increased to 11,146 from 8,039; number
of people with junior secondary education increased from 23,344 to 33,961; and
number of people with primary education decreased from 37,057 to 35,701.

Of the people enumerated
in the 31 provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities and servicemen of
the mainland of China, 85.07 million persons were illiterate (i.e. people over
15 years of age who can not read or can read very little). Compared with the 15.88
percent of illiterate people in the 1990 population census, the proportion had
dropped to 6.72 percent, or down by 9.16 percentage points.

V. Urban and Rural
Population.

In the 31 provinces,
autonomous regions and municipalities of the mainland of China, there were
455.94 million urban residents, accounting for 36.09 percent of the total
population; and that of rural residents stood at 807.39 million, accounting for
63.91 percent. Compared with the 1990 population census, the proportion of
urban residents rose by 9.86 percentage points.

POPULATION DISTRIBUTION

Following are
the results from the advance tabulation on the geographic distribution of
population from the fifth national population census of China:

Region

Population (million)

Beijing Municipality

13.82

Tianjin Municipality

10.01

Hebei Province

67.44

Shanxi Province

32.97

Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region

23.76

Liaoning Province

42.38

Jilin Province

27.28

Heilongjiang Province

36.89

Shanghai Municipality

16.74

Jiangsu Province

74.38

Zhejiang Province

46.77

Anhui Province

59.86

Fujian Province

(excluding the population in Jinmen and
Mazu and a few other islands)

34.71

Jiangxi Province

41.40

Shandong Province

90.79

Henan Province

92.56

Hubei Province

60.28

Hunan Province

64.40

Guangdong Province

86.42

Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region

44.89

Hainan Province

7.87

Chongqing Municipality

30.90

Sichuan Province

83.29

Guizhou Province

35.25

Yunnan Province

42.88

Tibet Autonomous Region

2.62

Shaanxi Province

36.05

Gansu Province

25.62

Qinghai Province

5.18

Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region

5.62

Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region

19.25

Hongkong Special Administrative Region

6.78

Macao Special Administrative Region

0.44

Taiwan Province and Jinmen, Mazu and a
few other islands of Fujian Province

22.28

Servicemen

2.50

Because of complex natural conditions,
the population of China is quite unevenly distributed. Population density
varies strikingly, with the greatest contrast occurring be­tween the eastern
half of China and the lands of the west and the north-west. Exceptionally high
population densities occur in the Yangtze Delta, in the Pearl River Delta, and
on the Ch'eng-tu Plain of the western Szechwan Basin. Most of the high-density
areas are coterminous with the alluvial plains on which intensive agriculture
is centred.

In contrast, the isolated, extensive
western and frontier regions, which are much larger than any European na­tion,
are sparsely populated. Extensive uninhabited areas include the extremely high
northern part of Tibet, the sandy wastes of the central Tarim and eastern Dzungarian
basins in Sinkiang, and the barren desert and mountains east of Lop Nor.

In the 1950s the government became
increasingly aware of the importance of the frontier regions and initiated a
drive for former members of the military and young intel­lectuals to settle
there. Consequently, the population has increased, following the construction
of new railways and highways that traverse the wasteland; a number of small
mining and industrial towns have also sprung up.

INTERNAL MIGRATION

Migrations have occurred often
throughout the history of China. Sometimes they took place because a famine or
political disturbance would cause the depopulation of an area already
intensively cultivated, after which people in adjacent crowded regions would
move in to occupy the deserted land. Sometime between 1640 and 1646 a peas­ant
rebellion broke out in Szechwan, and there was a great loss of life. People
from Hupeh and Shensi then entered Szechwan to fill the vacuum, and the
movement contin­ued until the 19th century. Again, during the middle of the
19th century, the Taiping Rebellion caused another large-scale disruption of
population. Many people in the Lower Yangtze were massacred by the opposing
armies, and the survivors suffered from starvation. After the defeat of the
rebellion, people from Hupeh, Hunan, and Honan moved into the depopulated areas
of Kiangsu. Anhwei. and Chekiang, where farmland was lying uncultivated for
want of labour. Similar examples are provided by the Nien Rebellion in the Huai
River region in the 1850s and '60s, the Muslim rebellions in Shensi and Kansu
in the 1860s and '70s, and the great Shensi and Shansi famine of 1877-78.

In modern history the domestic movement
of the Han to Manchuria (now known as the Northeast) is the most Migration
significant. Even before the establishment of the Ch'ing to dynasty in
1644, Manchu soldiers launched raids into Manchuria North China and captured
Han labourers, who were then obliged to settle in Manchuria. In 1668 the area
was closed to further Han migration by an Imperial decree, but this ban was
never effectively enforced. By 1850. Han settlers had secured a position of
dominance in their colonisation of Manchuria. The ban was later partially'
lifted, partly because the Manchu rulers were harassed by disturbances among
the teeming population of China proper and partly because the Russian Empire time and again tried
to invade sparsely populated and thus weakly defended Manchuria. The ban was
finally removed altogether in 1878, but set­tlement was encouraged only after
1900. The influx of people into Manchuria was especially pro­nounced after
1923, and incoming farmers rapidly brought a vast area of virgin prairie under
cultivation. About two-thirds of the immigrants entered Manchuria by sea, and
one-third came overland. Because of the severity of the winter weather,
migration in the early stage was highly sea­sonal, usually starting in February
and continuing through the spring. After the autumn harvest a large proportion
of the farmers returned south. As Manchuria developed into the principal
industrial region of China, however, large urban centres arose, and the nature
of the migration changed. No longer was the movement primarily one of agricultural
resettlement; instead it became essentially a rural-to-urban movement of
interregional magnitude. After 1949 the new government's efforts to foster
planned migration into interior and border regions produced no­ticeable
results. Although the total number of people involved in such migrations is not
known, it has been estimated that by 1980 about 25 to 35 percent of the
population of such regions and provinces as Inner Mon­golia, Sinkiang,
Heilungkiang. and Tsinghai consisted of recent migrants, and migration had
raised the percentage of Han in Sinkiang from about 10 to 40 percent of the
total. Efforts to control the growth of large cities led to the resettlement of
20,000,000 urbanites in the countryside after the failure of the Great Leap
Forward and of 17,-000,000 urban-educated youths in the decade after 1968.
Within the next decade, however, the majority of these "rusticated
youths" were allowed to return to the cities, and new migration from rural
areas pushed urban popu­lation totals upward once again.

China Sticks to
Population Control Policy in New Century

China will
continue its efforts to control the growth of the population in the 21 century,
said Zhang Weiqing, minister of the State Family Planning Commission on
November 2, 2000.

At the annual
board meeting of the Partners in Population and Development by South-South
Cooperation, which opened Thursday in Beijing, Zhang said that keeping a low
birth rate is the key task of China' s family planning program in the coming
decade.

He said that
China has made it a goal to keep the population below 1.4 billion until 2010 on
the basis of scientific feasibility study.

In order to
realise the goal, China is persisting in popularisation and education about family
planning and contraception, and it will make efforts to build a perfect
population control system suitable for China's situation, said Zhang.

According to Zhang, population will continue to be a pressing issue
for China in the 21st century. The annual net population growth will be more than
10 million at the start of the new century. The population will not decline
until it reaches a peak of 1.6 billion in the middle of the 21st century, Zhang
said.

At present,
China has a large work-age population, which puts a heavy burden on employment.
The work-age population will peak at 900 million in the coming decades.

In addition, Zhang predicts that
the number of senior citizens over the age of 60 in China will reach 130
million at the end of this year, and will exceed 357 million in 2030, and 439
million in 2050, or a quarter of the total population.

Zhang said
that China will stick to family planning policy for a long time depending on
future population situation.

President
on Population Control, Resources and Environmental Protection

Population
control, resources and environmental protection will be three crucial issues in
China's march toward becoming a great power in the new century, President Jiang
Zemin told a seminar held by the Communist Party of China Central Committee
Sunday.

Jiang said
that governmental decisions concerning the country's population control, resources
and environmental protection demand concerted efforts and cooperation from all
walks of life.

Jiang warned
that although marked progress had been made during the 1996-2000 period, China
is still facing many problems and challenges concerning population, resources
and environmental protection in the coming years.

"These
issues are directly related to the country's overall development. Failure in
handling them may postpone the achievement of China's set goals in terms of
social and economic development," said Jiang.

Jiang said
that the next few years will be a crucial stage for China to stabilise its
birth rate at the current low level and improve population quality.

When dealing with population
issues, governments at all levels should better serve the people's needs, and
turn the country's birth control efforts into a cause benefiting China's huge
populace, Jiang remarked.

Jiang also
said that resource-related works should better serve the country's sustainable
development. Protection and rational utilisation of resources are to be granted
equal importance by administration departments.

Meanwhile, the
president called for the establishment of a strict resources administration
mechanism, and urged the transformation of the traditional resource-utilising
norms, to save natural resources from being wasted.

Jiang
suggested the use of new technologies and a complete monitoring system to curb
the country's long-standing environmental pollution, while guaranteeing healthy
economic development.

Also in his
speech, Jiang stressed the importance of improving the regulation of China's
scarce water resources and the further construction of irrigation works.